HTC's Android Smartphone Production To Surpass Windows Mobile in 2010

Sales of Android smartphones must been promising enough for HTC, the smartphone specialists, to plan a substantial increase in the proportion of Android-based smartphones it will ship in 2010.

This will be done at the expense of Microsoft's Windows Mobile which was HTC's preferred platform until now; Android currently accounts for 30 percent of HTC's shipments and the company wants to push this to over 50 percent.

HTC has been quite aggressive in its approach with the release over the course of a few months of no less than three different Android-based mobile phones - HTC Hero, Magic & Dream, the original one.

Unlike Linux on the desktop front, Google doesn't have to fight against a lethargic and very conservative user base that doesn't want to spend millions upgrading legacy Windows-based software.

Like the desktop operating system landscape 20 years ago - when the likes of OS/2, DR-DOS, Next were roaming the earth - it is still very early days in the world of mobile technology.

Worryingly for Microsoft, HTC may act as the leader that others will start to follow. Sony Ericsson is already planning the X3 Xperia, another Android phone whose predecessor, the X1 was a Windows Mobile.

Windows Mobile 7 cannot come soon enough for Microsoft as it starts to slip behind its competitors at a rather depressing rate.

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HTC has also said that it will be launching a Qualcomm-based handset that will use the company's Brew Mobile Platform, probably in September or October and target the entry level segment. BREW - which stands for Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless - is a pseudo OS running on BREW real time OS. It would therefore be HTC's third platform.